At Grit Capital, we have been investing personal capital for a good while, to good success. Bringing together multi-stage family office investing, seed investing, and acceleration, and setting them all on a platform with a concentrated thesis and analytical rigor takes time. We have been moving all of those pieces into place for the better part of a year.

Grit Capital Partners will be traveling to the heart of the mobile world in February, Barcelona. We will be speaking on several panels, and are hosting industry dinners around two themes, IOT, and Disconnected Analytics. You can find us in and around Hall 8, and in coffee shops and tapas bars by appointment. We hope to see you there.

I often hear people in business use the phrase 30,000 feet. With few exceptions, it is never heard from visionaries, and rarely heard from successful entrepreneurs. Yet, the phrase persists in its everyday use, and its understanding by many as a place to visit – just for a time.

There is a reason for this disconnect, and it has everything to do with our internal definition of the phrase. Some…

For a while now, there has been an effort underway to drive innovation through maker-spaces. I must admit that the excitement of it was generally lost on me. Each time I would hear of one, it conjured up images of small 3d printers as big as an old fax machine. As someone focused on the intersection of technology, data, and media, it just did not resonate.

In many companies, it is challenging to develop a community full of people who are in rhythm. In the hiring process, it is sometimes difficult to see whether or not a potential team member adds to the GRIT IQ or not. In order to be a company that is both progressively more competitive, and practices a “fail-fast” growth-mindset in every aspect of work, the whole company need to be…

In a business a few years back, we came to the point where we were deciding whether to take acquisition offers or to prepare the company to execute on an Initial Public Offering, and list our shares on the NYSE. We discussed this at a board meeting, and to prepare – we built a presentation called the “Go Long Plan”. We purposefully titled it this way to avoid any…

In 2001, I first met a group of two people working in Atlanta on mobile internet services. They were a small team, under-resourced for what they needed. At the time, they were still managing some media content they were sending to pagers, and were working on text messaging their information. While they toiled, they were thinking far into the future and imagined what the long…

Thanks to technology, Every May, we can all be inspired by commencement speeches from across the globe. In every corner of the world, a tradition of University graduation ceremonies that feature an inspirational speech to the members of the graduating class can be witnessed by anyone with access to devices and broadband. For people who like to watch TED talks online, the month of May…

By now, most people have seen this video of Michael Phelps produced by Under Armour. If you have not watched it, you should. This ad may be identified as an important moment in the understanding of GRIT, but years down the line. For now, we are used to seeing interviews with olympic individual athletes, and seeing their glorious moments, and showing some of the backstory. What this video captures, however is…

I guess I should say Hello World, as this is what I hope to be a series of blog posts that explores the specific business value of GRIT. I hope to find and share examples of it where it is evident, and apply some of the lessons learned in a career spanning large Fortune 10 companies, small startups, and speculative investments – or “bets” on entrepreneurs or teams. Over…